A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe analyses the diverse Christian cultures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Czech lands, Austria, and lands of the Hungarian kingdom between the 15th and 18th centuries. It establishes the geography of Reformation movements across this region, and then considers different movements of reform and the role played by Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox clergy. This volume examines different contexts and social settings for reform movements, and investigates how cities, princely courts, universities, schools, books, and images helped spread ideas about reform. This volume brings together expertise on diverse lands and churches to provide the first integrated account of religious life in Central Europe during the early modern period. Contributors are: Phillip Haberkern, Maciej Ptaszynski, Astrid von Schlachta, Marta Fata, Natalia Nowakowska, Luka Ilic, Michael Springer, Edit Szegedi, Mihaly Balazs, Rona Johnston Gordon, Howard Louthan, Tadhg O hAnnrachain, Liudmyla Sharipova, Alexander Schunka, Rudolf Schloegl, Vaclav Buzek, Mark Hengerer, Michael Tworek, Pal Acs, Maria Craciun, Grazyna Jurkowlaniec, Laura Lisy-Wagner, and Graeme Murdock.

This volume draws together an international team of scholars to explore the experience and significance of early modern European continental warfare from an interdisciplinary perspective. Individual essays add to the lively fields of War and Society and the New Military History by combining the history of war with political and diplomatic history, the history of religion, social history, economic history, the history of ideas, the history of emotions, environmental history, art history, musicology, and the history of science and medicine. The contributors address how warfare was entwined with European learning, culture, and the arts, but also examine the ties between warfare and ideas or ideologies, and offer new ways of thinking about the costs and consequences of war. In addition to its interdisciplinarity, the volume is distinctive in including chapters focused not only on Western and Central Europe, but also the often-ignored European peripheries, such as the Baltics and the Russian frontier, Scandinavia, and the Habsburg-Ottoman borderlands of Southeastern Europe. As a whole, the volume offers readers interesting alternatives and threads for reconsidering the place and meaning of warfare within the larger history of early modern continental Europe. This book will be valuable for general readers, undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars interested in military, early modern, and European history.

This volume draws together an international team of scholars to explore the experience and significance of early modern European continental warfare from an interdisciplinary perspective. Individual essays add to the lively fields of War and Society and the New Military History by combining the history of war with political and diplomatic history, the history of religion, social history, economic history, the history of ideas, the history of emotions, environmental history, art history, musicology, and the history of science and medicine. The contributors address how warfare was entwined with European learning, culture, and the arts, but also examine the ties between warfare and ideas or ideologies, and offer new ways of thinking about the costs and consequences of war. In addition to its interdisciplinarity, the volume is distinctive in including chapters focused not only on Western and Central Europe, but also the often-ignored European peripheries, such as the Baltics and the Russian frontier, Scandinavia, and the Habsburg-Ottoman borderlands of Southeastern Europe. As a whole, the volume offers readers interesting alternatives and threads for reconsidering the place and meaning of warfare within the larger history of early modern continental Europe. This book will be valuable for general readers, undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars interested in military, early modern, and European history.

This volume provides the first geographically broad, comparative survey of early modern 'sacred history', or writing on the history of the Christian Church, its leaders and saints, and its institutional and doctrinal developments, in the two centuries from c. 1450-1650. With deep medieval roots, ecclesiastical history was generally a conservative enterprise, often serving to reinforce confessional, national, regional, dynastic, or local identities. But writers of sacred history innovated in research methods and in techniques of scholarly production, especially after the advent of print. The demand for sacred history was particularly acute in the various movements for religious reform, in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. After the Renaissance, many writers sought to apply humanist critical principles to writing about the church, but the sceptical thrust of humanist historiography threatened to undermine many ecclesiastical traditions, and religious historians often had to wrestle with tensions between criticism and piety.
Thirteen thematic chapters examine the influence of Renaissance humanism, religious reform, and other political, intellectual, and social developments of these two centuries on the writing of ecclesiastical history in its various forms. These diverse genres, inherited from medieval culture, included saints' lives, diocesan histories, national chronicles, and travel accounts. Early chapters examine Catholic and Protestant traditions of sacred historiography in western Europe, especially Italy and Switzerland. Subsequent chapters examine particular instances of sacred historiography in Germany, central Europe, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Portuguese India; and developments in Christian art historiography and Holy Land antiquarianism.

This is the first English translation of Theuerdank which makes the volume useful and more accessible to a much larger audience. Accompanied by over 100 woodcut images, students are able to more fully comprehend how this text would have been understood to its original sixteenth-century audience. With the inclusion of an introductory essay, chronology, genealogical tables, maps, translator's note, and discussion questions, the volume is a useful resource for discussion and prompts students to think about European soceity and culture more broadly during the sixteenth century.

This is the first English translation of Theuerdank which makes the volume useful and more accessible to a much larger audience. Accompanied by over 100 woodcut images, students are able to more fully comprehend how this text would have been understood to its original sixteenth-century audience. With the inclusion of an introductory essay, chronology, genealogical tables, maps, translator's note, and discussion questions, the volume is a useful resource for discussion and prompts students to think about European soceity and culture more broadly during the sixteenth century.

Early modern Central Europe was the continent's most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe's most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region's Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration-one of the most debated questions of the early modern period-is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

Prior to the Thirty Years War, almost all of Bohemia's population lay outside the Catholic fold, yet by the beginning of the eighteenth century the kingdom was clearly under Rome's influence. Few regions in Europe's history have ever experienced such a complete religious transformation; because of this, Bohemia offers a unique window for examining the Counter-Reformation and the nature of early modern Catholicism. Converting Bohemia presents a full assessment of the Catholic Church's re-establishment in the Czech lands, arguing that this complex phenomenon was less a product of violence and force than of negotiation and persuasion. Ranging from art, architecture and literature to music, philosophy and hagiography, Howard Louthan's study reintegrates the region into the broader European world where it played such a prominent role in the early modern period. It will be of particular interest to scholars of early modern European history, religion, and Reformation studies.

Prior to the Thirty Years' War, almost all of Bohemia's population lay outside the Catholic fold, yet by the beginning of the eighteenth century the kingdom was clearly under Rome's influence. Few regions in Europe's history have ever experienced such a complete religious transformation; because of this, Bohemia offers a unique window for examining the Counter-Reformation and the nature of early modern Catholicism. Converting Bohemia presents the first full assessment of the Catholic church's re-establishment in the Czech lands, arguing that this complex phenomenon was less a product of violence and force than of negotiation and persuasion. Ranging from art, architecture and literature to music, philosophy and hagiography, Howard Louthan's study reintegrates the region into the broader European world where it played such a prominent role in the early modern period. It will be of particular interest to scholars of early modern European history, religion, and Reformation studies.

The Quest for Compromise is an interdisciplinary study of the imperial court in late sixteenth-century Vienna, and a detailed examination of a fascinating moment of religious moderation. Against a backdrop of rising religious and confessional dogmatism, the Emperor Maximilian II (1564-1576) assembled a remarkable cast of courtiers who resisted extremes of both Reformation and Counter-Reformation. This book investigates the rise and fall of an irenic movement through four individuals whose work at the imperial court reflected the ideals of religious compromise and moderation. An Italian artist (Jacopo Strada), a Silesian physician (Johannes Crato), a Dutch librarian (Hugo Blotius) and a German soldier (Lazarus von Schwendi) sought peace and accommodation through a wide range of cultural, intellectual and political activity.

The Quest for Compromise is an interdisciplinary study of the imperial court in late sixteenth-century Vienna, and a detailed examination of a fascinating moment of religious moderation. Against a backdrop of rising religious and confessional dogmatism, the Emperor Maximilian II (1564-1576) assembled a remarkable cast of courtiers who resisted extremes of both Reformation and Counter-Reformation. This book investigates the rise and fall of an irenic movement through four individuals whose work at the imperial court reflected the ideals of religious compromise and moderation. An Italian artist (Jacopo Strada), a Silesian physician (Johannes Crato), a Dutch librarian (Hugo Blotius) and a German soldier (Lazarus von Schwendi) sought peace and accommodation through a wide range of cultural, intellectual and political activity.